Sara Teasdale was born on August 8. 1884, in St. Louis, Missouri. Her parents, John and Mary Elizabeth, tutored their shy and reserved daughter at home until she turned nine years old, at which point she entered a private school. While she attended the school, she began writing poems, one of which appeared in Reedy’s Mirror, a local literary publication, in 1907. That same year, her first collection of poems, Sonnets to Duse and Other Poems, was published.

Teasdale frequently visited nearby Chicago, Illinois and befriended Harriet Monroe, the woman responsible for the foundation of the literary magazine Poetry. Teasdale’s second poetry volume, Helen of Troy and Other Poems, was printed in 1911… [Teasdale published Stars To-Night (1930), a book of verses for children] … and received positive critical reviews for its lyrical mastery and romantic subject matter. Teasdale married Ernst Filsinger, an exporter, in 1914 and moved with her new husband to New York City, where she published Rivers to the Sea (1915), her third poetry collection. The volume garnered encouraging critical and popular responses, but Teasdale had yet to print her most successful compilation. Love Songs, published in 1917, won the Columbia University Poetry Society Prize–which would eventually be renamed the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry–as well as the Poetry Society of America Prize.

Teasdale also edited two anthologies of poetry, The Answering Voice: One Hundred Love Lyrics by Women (1917) and Rainbow Gold: Verses New and Old for Boys and Girls (1922), as well as published her own original work. Her talent for creating classical, romantic verses developed greatly during the poet’s time in New York City, seen especially in Flame and Shadow (1920) and Dark of the Moon (1926), the collections published before she and her husband divorced unhappily in September of 1929. After the separation, Teasdale published Stars To-Night (1930), a book of verses for children, and moved to England, where she began research for a biography of Christina Rossetti. She fell ill with pneumonia and returned to New York City, where she never fully recovered. She continued to write poetry despite her frailty, but developed a debilitating nervous condition and very often endured sleeplessness.

Teasdale was found dead on January 29, 1933, after she had purposely taken an overdose of barbiturates and committed suicide. A final collection of her poetry, Strange Victory, was published posthumously that same year. Teasdale’s work, proclaimed by critics to have had a musical quality to it, has also been set to music since her untimely passing.